


A Brief History of Optics

by crowroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Brotherly Love, Evolution, Family History, Heaven, Hell, Memories, Metaphysics, Possession, Saving People Hunting Things, Season/Series 11 Spoilers, Stars, Vessels, faith - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 11:41:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6904465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/pseuds/crowroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, and light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brief History of Optics

 

Sam cuts on a light.

Sam cuts class to chase a ghost. Clears a stepfather, burns bones. Looks for his brother. Feels Dean’s hand star a hip. Gets wet. Gets burnt. Sparks up the nose. Terpenes. Dean’s breath, a flash. Baby’s minor earthquake, the rutted road. Soft southern sparkplug pines. Brown sugar. The wail of a spirit, departing to sleep.

Dean is a meteor. Dean is a radiant. Sam’s been drinking but it doesn’t take much. Chink of pool balls. Five-spots, a promise.

Oh fuck, fuck, Dean says. Sam is bleeding. Dean is bleeding, long slashes down one side. Dean presses down. Sam doesn’t howl. Not the femoral, Sam says. Takes the towel, does it himself. Takes the towel, does Dean.  Mother of—Dean says, and _fuck_. Curved. Needle. Stitch. The whole history of a dynasty of weres. Cold midwestern wind--

sweeping a front before it.

Angels are only a dream. Sam prays. Sam has an angel on his shoulder. On his collarbone. Sam has divinity pooled in the hollow of his throat. Or streetlights.

*****

Neon, sodium; incandescents.

Sam drinks. Dean shouts. Dad is dead.

Mom is dead; Jess is dead; the past and the future are dead.

Sam meets a demon, more than one. Sam learns the weather of Michigan; fog and icebows, broken breath. Sam swallows smoke, fists hair, screams, learns to go two-drivered, self-shotgun. Hover ‘til over, a refraction. Sam dreams holy houses. Churches burnt bald. Candles; a cursed book.

Breaks up in a starred mirror.

Says _yes._

*****

It’s dark again.

Dean holds ice to Sam’s head, breaks-

into a million brothers.

Wake up, geek boy. Wake up.

*****

They look at stars, think in years.

They used to hunt shifters, crossroads, smell of yarrow. Sam smells of sucked-out grace, hell, hemoglobin, grave-iron, fulgurite. That’s Artemis, up there in the moon; that’s _us_.

Sam is a beam. Sam is dispersed.

God is a particle. God is a wave.

*****

God is dead.

Sam lights pyres.

Sam learns to talk to ghosts.

*****

A soul is lux of another kind; two souls; two—

roadflares, _axis mundi_.

Dean fucks much of waitresskind; an angel, grace in a tree.

Sam fucks memories. Sam fucks himself.

Sam drinks the devil, learns to walk hollow.

Kills: too many. Meets: gods, dogs, his own shade. There in the big trees.

Sam meets death in a cabin. Moths and chlorophyll and Dean.

Sam meets death over Mexican, ashes to ashes and death to dust.

String of colored bulbs, swung in the breeze. Candlepower—

against dark.

*****

Sam is measured in motes, lumens, letters.

Dean brings drinks, cut crystal, touches him like—

shadows, shadows.

Sam learns to live underground _._ Dean irons. Sam hears Dean’s heart—

a tremor at night, a minor earthquake.

Sam thinks of the lightning-struck tree. Sam dreams of apples, revivals. Kansas is rainsheets, open sky. Sam runs and larks fly up--

break out in bows.

*****

Holy fire. Burnt filaments, hair.

Sam reads: Greek, Latin, Enochian in certain states, seven other languages, spell, sigil, the conquering of fear, like that, like that—

you, boy, infra- and ultra-, you _contain._

Sam pounds barefoot down halls, sets fire to bowls, bloods, telescopes though woods, carries an angel; saves an angel—

from himself, photon incarnate, a bolt.

Hits the brakes.

Says _no_.

*****

Sam turns out the lights.

Sam prays.

*****

Dean is a meteor. Dean is a radiant.

Dean watches Sam sleep.

Sam dreams.

One day you’re gonna find god, boy, a reaper says. One you’re gonna walk a mile through a field of flowers to your brother. One day you’re gonna go dark. Watch the dark crawl through you, boy, more than once.  Let the dark out. Pray. You’re gonna die, more than once. Pray. Then you’re gonna glow, boy. You’ll see.

You’re gonna light up the whole world.


End file.
